Recent content by Gorgon Zee

The statement that the only thing that matters in an an RPG is whether or not you die is a very foreign one to me. For me, the core of a successful RPG campaign is all about how characters evolve over time -- mechanically and/or narratively. I can easily conceive of a fun RPG campaign with...

I think for me, the in-game "you have X turns to achieve a goal" is something I think of a resource management issue. So, for example, in The One Ring, when you have a council scene, you geta fixed number of chances to try to influence the other party until they run out of patience. D&D4E's...

13th Age Montage Scenes: I run those in any system that has any form of checks. If the system has a meta-currency, I'll use a montage scene to refresh them, but it's trivial to run anywhere. The One Ring Travel System: The core elements I use are (1) each player takes one of a set of roles (2)...

Strangelove is the Kubrick film I have watched most often. I can’t say if I feel it’s the best of his movies, but it’s the one that I enjoy the most. Darkly delicious, capturing a moment in time perfectly. It has several of the most memorable quotes of any of his films. And it has Peter Sellers...

QUEEN OF THE DAMNED is a weak film but a fun book. Not sure you can get into it without reading the previous ones, but pop-culture vampires are definitely a thing!

Beyoncé High Concept: Global Pop Icon & Cultural Powerhouse Trouble: Living Under the Spotlight Other Aspects: “Sasha Fierce” on Stage Creative Perfectionist Philanthropist with a Queen’s Heart Skills: Great (+4): Performance Good (+3): Rapport, Resources Fair (+2): Athletics, Empathy...

Ok, so that is your interpretation of the characters in English. Great. Now are you going to show how to build them in your system and explain how they do stuff? Give us their character sheets, please

Typically you give a preview of the game, explaining which genres it works best for, the main rules it uses and its influences. Ok, please take the following 3 characters, build them in your system and walk us through how they would be played in a typical encounter, say extracting information...

Slight Aside: "Not really, maybe once or twice in an adventure" is an oxymoron for me as I generally have one or two combats ONLY in an adventure. In general I tend to plan out likely paths for an adventure, and script encounters for them, but my players commonly will then do something...

Well, this conversation has been helpful. I just checked my books and found that there is no penalty for a second shotgun attack at the same target, so you can fire two shots in one round and reload the next, so you get off one attack per round overall, rather than the 2 every three rounds I was...

I don’t think you can have played these games in longer campaigns. In NBA, you are fighting vampires, and vampires are famously vulnerable to piercing weapons, and very often completely immune to bullets, so switching between pistol and stabby weapon is absolutely a common thing. In CoC guns are...

Well, if you escalate the language and decide to portray players as very aggressive, then yeah, I can see why you hate that. Let's de-escalate your example before addressing it: Isn't the entire point of taking actions in the game to alter its reality? If I hit a window with an axe, isn't my...

Not completely convinced here. The difference between a ranged weapon and a melee weapon is almost certainly very important, even in games that have no cost for swapping. Examples I have run campaigns in: Night's Black Agents (GUMSHOE) -- very combat heavy. I wanted to encourage swapping...

The people I play PF2 with also have experience with many other game systems, which helps a lot. For example, Fate handles solos pretty similarly -- they are very hard to affect and very hard to defend against without assistance -- you need to build advantages. For me, this is a good feature. I...

I like to use a phrase like “as an experienced (investigator|marine|dungeon delver|…) you are confident you have discovered everything of value here and can move on”